In most sports, repetitive exercises and practice are essential for players to maintain and improve their skills. The game of golf is no exception. For example, a critical skill for a golfer is to have an accurate, repeatable putting stroke from anywhere on a putting surface. To achieve a repeatable putting stroke, the golfer may practice by manually placing golf balls in a desired pattern on a putting green or an artificial putting surface and putting the balls into holes on the green, and then the golfer repeats the process.
Manually placing the golf balls in the pattern and/or distances desired by the golfer is time consuming and imprecise. Moreover, after the golfer has putted a set of balls attempting to sink them into a designated hole, to achieve consistency the golfer must duplicate the previous ball positions to repeat the putting practice session. This set-up activity requires considerable effort and time to place the golf balls on the putting surface in repeatable positions for multiple practice putting.
In addition, not all putting practice greens have the hole locations in the practice set-up that the golfer desires. Most golf practice holes are preset by a golf course maintenance crew and for the practice green, these preset hole placements are limited and usually cover common putting scenarios rather than a combination of flat surfaces, hillsides, downhill or uphill slope, et cetera.
Moreover, many golfers constantly leave putts short of a golf hole and need to practice getting the putt to the hole at the correct speed to improve chances of making a putt on an intended line of the putt. This also holds true for those golfers who constantly hit the ball too hard and roll it past the hole.
As suggested above, effective practice requires repetitive golf shots; i.e. hitting golf ball after golf ball to hone a particular golf skill, such as chipping or putting. Of course, using one golf ball, hitting it, and retrieving it after each shot would be extraordinarily time consuming and impractical.
Using a bag to store and dispense golf balls is a more effective use of the golfer's practice time, but after numerous balls have been struck, they must be retrieved. So even if the golfer waits to retrieve multiple golf balls after a round of shots, it becomes more difficult and time consuming to retrieve several golf balls as a group. This usually involves picking up the individual balls by bending at the waist and loading the balls back into the ball storage bag. If a conventional ball snagger is used, the golfer must unload the snagger, which results in random patterns each time.
What is needed in the sport of golf is a system for dispensing multiple golf balls across various landscapes relative to a putting hole or practice target at repeatable distances and patterns. Moreover, the desired system should be equipped for rapid golf ball retrieval after putting or chipping the balls and for efficient reloading of the golf balls for repeated dispensing.